A look at four of this week’s top football games in the Southland:
FRIDAY
Garfield (8-1) vs. Roosevelt (1-8) at East L.A. College, 7:30 p.m.
It’s rivalry week highlighted by the East L.A. Classic that annually draws the most fans for a regular-season game in Los Angeles. Garfield is heavily favored, led by running back Ceasar Reyes, who has gone past 2,000 yards rushing this season. Roosevelt was shut out last week by Bell, so the Rough Riders will need to improve fast. The pick: Garfield.
St. John Bosco (6-2) vs. Mater Dei (6-2) at Santa Ana Stadium, 7 p.m.
Second place in the Trinity League is on the line, along with a top-four seeding in the Southern Section Division 1 playoffs. Both teams have rising running backs, with Maliq Allen for St. John Bosco and Asir Nembhard for Mater Dei. Let’s see which team can deny the big play. The pick: St. John Bosco.
San Juan Hills (8-1) at Mission Viejo (7-1), 7 p.m.
This is the Alpha League championship game. Mission Viejo’s powerful offensive line allows the Diablos the option to pass or run. San Juan Hills’ defense got a shutout over San Clemente last week. The pick: Mission Viejo.
Bishop Amat (8-1) at Sierra Canyon (9-0), 7 p.m.
Bishop Amat has already taken a big leap in the second season for coach Kory Minor. But beating Sierra Canyon on its home field will be tough. Sierra Canyon’s ability to run the ball with Jaxsen Stokes is key. The pick: Sierra Canyon.
WASHINGTON — At first glance, President Trump’s decision to relax U.S. sanctions on Russia despite its continuing invasion of Ukraine was a dramatic break from principles that guided American foreign policy for most of a century.
Since the end of World War II, U.S.-Russian relations have oscillated between hostility and friendship, but one element was consistent: When Russia tried to take over one if its neighbors, the United States pushed back.
“The Trump administration has abandoned any pretense of being an honest broker,” Richard N. Haass, a former senior State Department official under then-President George W. Bush, wrote last week. “It has gone all in on Russia’s side.”
The break from long-standing tradition was real, but it should not have been entirely surprising.
Trump has long expressed admiration for Russia’s autocratic leader, Vladimir Putin — part of a syndrome one of his former aides, Fiona Hill, has called “autocrat envy.”
“He wants to rule like them,” she said, referring to the president’s bromances with Putin, China’s Xi Jinping and other strongmen.
Meanwhile, Trump often expresses disdain for democratically elected leaders of smaller countries, and he reserves a special loathing for the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky.
He has repeatedly said Zelensky was foolish to resist Russia’s 2022 invasion because, in his view, the larger country is almost certain to win the war.
“Russia is a massive country,” he said this month. “Even if it loses a million soldiers, it still has a million more. Ukraine doesn’t have that kind of manpower.”
Moreover, Trump has long believed U.S. companies could reap an economic bonanza from Russia’s resource-rich economy. As a real estate magnate, he spent 30 years seeking deals in Moscow; in 2008, his son Donald Jr. said Russians had provided the Trump Organization “a lot of our assets.”
In the short run, the president hopes to boost Republican prospects in next week’s midterm elections by buying diesel fuel from Russia — a move aimed at lowering prices at the cost of bolstering Putin’s war economy. (It hasn’t worked; the price of diesel has risen slightly since Trump’s decision.)
But he has a longer-term goals as well. He has long believed better relations between the United States and Russia would be good for both countries, no matter who’s in power in Moscow. And he has long yearned openly for a Nobel Peace Prize — and one way might be to arrange a durable ceasefire in Ukraine.
All those factors have led Trump to overturn two major elements of traditional U.S. foreign policy.
Instead of supporting Ukraine, the victim of a foreign military invasion, he’s been pressing the Zelensky to accept Putin’s demands for territory.
“President Trump still wants a personal relationship with Putin, and he wants to change the nature of the bilateral U.S.-Russian relationship. Ukraine is in the way. So what President Trump is trying to do is get Ukraine out of the way. … President Trump wants Zelensky to capitulate,” Hill said.
“Zelensky has to want to settle this war, and if he doesn’t, I think it’s going to be a very bad thing,” Trump said last week.
As he issued that advice, Ukraine’s army was experiencing interruptions with three forms of U.S. military help: Starlink, the communications system it uses to guide its anti-drone missiles; U.S.-provided early radar warnings of Russian missile attacks; and supplies of Patriot anti-missile weapons. U.S. officials claimed the three incidents were not deliberate — but to Ukrainians, they felt like a warning.
Meanwhile, instead of putting pressure on Putin through the traditional means of economic sanctions, Trump said he was trying to entice the Russian leader to negotiate by giving him preemptive rewards.
“I am in the process of negotiating Peace in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and don’t want to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table,” he explained on Truth Social. “Great progress is being made.”
But signs of that progress were hard to find. In St. Petersburg last week, Trump’s personal envoy, Steve Witkoff, presented Putin with a ceasefire proposal that the Americans negotiated with Ukraine and European countries. A top Putin aide dismissed the document, saying it “contained little of real value.”
Instead, the Russian president offered to increase Russian fertilizer exports to U.S. farmers. And he said he hoped Trump would join him at a summit meeting in China with Xi.
Ukraine has not been invited to that meeting, which prompted Haass to resurrect an old diplomatic aphorism: “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.”
Haass and other veterans of U.S. negotiations with Russia fear that Putin is merely stalling for time and pocketing Trump’s concessions while he tries to grind Ukraine down with missile attacks on Kyiv and other cities.
“If Trump and Witkoff were serious, they would give Putin 15 days to say yes to their ceasefire proposal — and if he doesn’t, they would impose new and tougher sanctions,” said Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. “There are still a lot of things they can do that would put Russia in a corner.”
But that has not been Trump’s inclination so far.
The irony, Hill said, is that even if Trump gets his way, that may not produce the victory he appears to expect.
“Putin and Trump are not the only actors in this,” she said. “Ukraine is not anybody’s to give. Its not Putin’s to have, and it’s not Zelensky’s. … This whole war is about Ukrainians wanting the right to determine their own future. It’s not Putin’s right or anyone else’s. It’s not Donald Trump’s to give away.”
The Rams moved to augment their struggling special teams on Tuesday, signing veteran kicker Brandon McManus.
The Rams worked out McManus and veteran Matt Prater on Tuesday and then chose McManus to replace Blake Grupe, who is on injured reserve after suffering a knee injury during his Rams debut in an 18-16 defeat by the Arizona Cardinals at SoFi Stadium on Sunday.
McManus will be the third kicker on the roster this season for a team that opened as the favorite to win Super Bowl LXI but is now struggling with a 2-4 record heading into Sunday’s game against the Raiders in Las Vegas.
Harrison Mevis, signed by the Rams at midseason in 2025, was released last week after making only five of nine field-goal attempts this season. Grupe kicked a 44-yard field goal against the Cardinals but was injured on the ensuing play when he knocked a Cardinals kick returner out of bounds.
Punter Ethan Evans kicked an extra point that put the Rams ahead, 17-15, with less than a minute remaining before the Cardinals kicked a winning field goal.
McManus, 35, has made 297 of 362 field-goal attempts (82%) during a 12-year career that has included stints with the Denver Broncos, Jacksonville Jaguars and Green Bay Packers. In 2025, he made 24 of 30 field-goal attempts for the Packers.
The Rams also placed receiver Davante Adams and defensive lineman Poona Ford on injured reserve because of hamstring and triceps injuries, respectively. Coach Sean McVay said Monday that Adams would be sidelined six to 10 weeks and that Ford is out for the season.
Vicky Lagos, the City Section commissioner, was watching last week’s King/Drew-Crenshaw football game on the sideline when she noticed problems with the chain crew.
She proceeded to become part of it, holding the down marker and helping educate the inexperienced students.
It was another example of her versatility and ability to improvise and intervene when needed.
John McLellan is not old enough to have a driver’s license at 13 years old, but the Redondo Beach teenager has been racing kart cars at speeds nearing 80 mph in Italy this month.
Last week, he had a breakthrough performance, finishing third among 117 drivers representing 33 countries at the FIA Karting World Cup OK-N Junior Final at Leopard Circuit Viterbo, Italy.
His father, John Sr., sent him to Italy for four weeks to compete for Sweden-based Ward Racing.
“Dad is on him all the time,” his father said. “Do your homework, brush your teeth.”
“Yes and yes,” John Jr. said this week after returning home.
John Jr. is enrolled in a Texas-based online middle school to help with his unpredictable traveling schedule. He had been a club soccer player until deciding racing is what he wants to do.
First he was into motocross at age 6. After an accident resulting in a broken hand and broken collarbone, kart racing became his specialty, with a dream of racing Formula 1 cars.
John McLellan, 13, in his Kart car.
(Matteo Segago)
His mother is from Australia and his father is a Torrance native who chose racing motorcycles over playing high school soccer. Like father, like son.
“He loves it,” John Sr. said. “What kid wouldn’t want to race cars?”
John said of the strangeness driving high speeds at 13: “Whenever you have a kid going 80 mph without a driver’s license and going to middle school, you would think that’s absolute carnage and crazy. Karting is just a very competitive sport.”
The average lap speeds are 56 mph. John wants to attend a regular high school when he enters ninth grade next year, so whether it’s Rolling Hills Prep or Redondo Union, new friends need to know they’re hanging out with a teenager who, as Tom Cruise said in “Top Gun,” “I feel the need … the need for speed.”
This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.
In the race to become L.A.’s next mayor, the city’s top cop — LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell — has become a lightning rod for debate.
The two candidates — incumbent Karen Bass and City Councilmember Nithya Raman — have staked out differing positions about how the Los Angeles Police Department has performed under McDonnell.
Raman has vowed to replace McDonnell, saying he has not “met the moment” given the department’s response to federal immigration raids. Bass has publicly backed the chief she hired two years ago, saying the LAPD could be thrown into disarray if McDonnell is removed before the 2028 Olympic Games.
Raman’s potential ouster of McDonnell and desire to push reforms on the LAPD has pitted her against the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the powerful union for rank-and-file officers that campaigned against Bass during her first election but is now backing her. The union has poured millions of dollars into attack ads against Raman, who has said she declined contributions from the organization in the past.
In an op-ed published in the Protective League’s monthly magazine earlier this year, union president Richard Mendoza called the Democratic Socialists of America, which has endorsed Raman, an “imminent threat to our members.”
Last week, Raman faced criticism for an Instagram video in which she appeared to slam McDonnell and the mayor, saying at one point “only you can stop fascist liars.” She later denied that she was referring to Bass or McDonnell, saying her remarks were improperly edited — and that she had the video pulled.
The Raman campaign did not respond to numerous requests for an interview about her vision for the LAPD.
Raman, a Harvard-educated urban planner, has sought to burnish her credentials as a political outsider by publicly calling for a change in LAPD leadership — but she hasn’t given a clear timeline on when she would replace McDonnell.
LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell greets Mayor Karen Bass during a ceremony at police headquarters in downtown Los Angeles on May 27.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Last week, Raman told ABC7 she expected to replace McDonnell in 2030, after he has finished his first five-year term. Hours later, she pulled back a bit, issuing a statement saying she expects to replace him prior to the end of his term, which concludes in late 2029.
“Chief McDonnell is Mayor Bass’s police chief,” her statement said. “I have made it clear that I would seek a chief who can keep Angelenos safe and restore trust with our immigrant communities.”
Her comments at a mayoral debate this week threw further uncertainty about who will run the LAPD if she gets the top job.
Raman sidestepped a question about whether she would replace McDonnell before the Olympics.
“I believe he’s lost the trust of Angelenos, especially in light of the ICE raids,” she said, adding that she wasn’t sure that she could make a “unilateral decision” to fire McDonnell outright. Bass pounced on the comment, saying that the fact that Raman didn’t know the mayor has that authority to get rid of a police chief shows she is unfit for the office.
The LAPD didn’t immediately respond to a request Thursday for an interview with McDonnell.
Asked about Raman’s remarks during his regular appearance on Fox 11 Los Angeles on Wednesday, McDonnell said he found it “problematic” to hear criticism of the LAPD’s response to civil unrest from someone “who wasn’t there.”
He defended the department’s protest response, saying his officers acted appropriately when confronted by unruly demonstrators hurling bottles, bricks, Molotov cocktails and commercial-grade fireworks. Fifty-two officers suffered injuries, ranging from concussions to hearing loss, he said. Such “riotous situations” necessitated the use of tear gas against crowds, he said, something the department hadn’t done in decades.
“It was getting to a point where it could become a deadly force situation, which we were trying to avoid at all costs,” he said. “I don’t think it could’ve been done differently that could’ve had a better outcome.”
City Councilmember Nithya Raman speaks during a debate with incumbent Mayor Karen Bass on Oct. 13.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
Conventional wisdom holds that new mayors will eventually select their own chief, a decision that is considered as important as any in defining a city leader’s legacy. Some have waited longer than others to do it. Bass, for instance, oversaw the reappointment of McDonnell’s predecessor, Michel Moore, shortly after her election and stood by him for a year before Moore’s abrupt resignation in early 2024.
Mayors in other big cities have faced similar dilemmas.
In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist whom Raman is sometimes compared to, recently announced that he intends to retain NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, in a move that was decried by his progressive base. Mamdani told local media that he believed that Tisch was right for the job, based on a proven track record of rooting out corruption and had overseen a crime drop as commissioner, which is the equivalent of a police chief in L.A.
Bass selected McDonnell to lead the LAPD in November 2024 after a lengthy nationwide search.
His appointment was viewed with surprise in local political circles, where some questioned why a progressive mayor like Bass, with a background in community organizing, would hitch her fortunes to a law-and-order chief. Others argued that McDonnell was an appealing choice: An LAPD veteran who offered experience and respect after serving as the chief in Long Beach and later as L.A. County sheriff.
After numerous scandals under Moore, McDonnell was seen as offering stability while the city prepared for the massive security challenges of the World Cup and Olympic Games. In McDonnell, his supporters say, the mayor has an honest and principled leader who has managed to steady a department beset by low morale, dwindling staffing levels and aging facilities. Violent crime has fallen to historic lows under his watch, as it has it many other U.S. cities.
McDonnell, however, has faced withering scrutiny over a dramatic rise in police shootings last year and for the department’s use of hard foam projectiles, tear gas, horse-mounted officers and other tactics against protesters. Within the LAPD, some have also criticized McDonnell for taking a detached approach to running the department and ceding control to underlings, such as Assistant Chief Dominic Choi.
During Tuesday’s debate, Raman suggested that under McDonnell the LAPD has drifted back to being a more opaque, closed-off agency that no longer publishes basic information such as neighborhood-level crime statistics.
In a recent interview with The Times, Bass signaled her frustration with the slow pace of change within the LAPD.
Without singling out McDonnell by name, Bass said she was concerned about the lack of progress on revamping LAPD’s much-maligned disciplinary system, which the chief oversees and which — depending on who you ask — either punishes officers too harshly or fails to hold them accountable.
Bass said that when she toured police station houses after being elected, the number one complaint she heard was about the perception that lower-ranking officers are punished more severely than command staff.
“They feel that command gets away with a lot of things that the rank and file does not,” she said. “So I feel like the reform of the disciplinary system has not gone fast enough, and I am concerned about that.”
Bass has also vowed to make a priority of addressing police shootings of civilians, particularly those involving people experiencing mental health crises. Last month, she signed an executive directive calling for an outside review of the LAPD’s policies and training, which she referred to as “woefully inadequate.”
Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell speaks at a news conference at the Hall of Justice on Aug. 6.
(Arwen Clemans / Los Angeles Times)
If McDonnell has any doubts about his future, he hasn’t hinted at them during recent public appearances, often talking about the department’s role in the Olympics.
Bass told The Times that a push to replace McDonnell right before the 2028 Olympic Games would leave the LAPD with a leadership vacuum just as its leaders are supposed to be focused on security plans for that event. The last time city leaders recruited a new chief, the search process was nationwide, lasting more than 10 months, she said.
“I think that [Raman] is naive on what it means to do that,” Bass said. “I think she’s naive, and not understanding the instability to the department when leadership is in flux. And so if it took her the same amount of time, that means we’d have a new police chief about seven to eight months before one of the most high-profile security events in U.S. history.”
LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell with his wife Kathy, right, is introduced as the 59th chief of the Los Angeles Police Department with Dr. Erroll Southers, then the president of the Los Angeles Police Commission, left, and Mayor Karen Bass on Nov. 14, 2024.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
In some ways, Raman and Bass are not as far apart on public safety as they previously were. Both candidates have been critical of the license plate reader company Flock Safety, advocated for investing in alternatives to policing and have recently indicated that they are committed to keeping the LAPD from shrinking any further. And since launching her mayoral bid, Raman’s campaign has publicly distanced itself from the “defund the police” movement that Bass has consistently rebuffed.
Where the two candidates diverge most sharply was over a package of police raises negotiated by Bass in 2023 that Raman said has deepened the city’s financial problems. Sold as a way to boost recruitment, the pay increases are among the reasons the police union has endorsed Bass’ reelection. The next mayor will be asked to negotiate a new police contract, which is set to expire next year.
Matt Klink, an L.A.-based Republican political consultant, said that law enforcement groups, such as the Protective League, were skeptical of Bass when she first took office but now back her because she has “shown through her first term in office that she has consistently supported the police.” He said that Raman, on the other hand, has played to the far left by villainizing McDonnell and downplaying concerns about safety.
“Mayor Bass has a stronger record of supporting the police,” he said. “She backed our contracts and our budgets — she has generally supported public safety.”
UCLA professor David Turner said despite his wariness of Bass’ centrist drift, he and other progressives are equally skeptical of Raman, who, has repeatedly voted to increase the LAPD budget without any meaningful efforts to rein in police misconduct.
“That money was proposed by Mayor Bass and voted and approved by Councilmember Nithya Raman,” said Turner, who runs Million Dollar Hoods, which seeks to map the impact of mass incarceration. Still, he said, he hopes that Raman’s tough talk about McDonnell will translate into more accountability for the LAPD.
“What I’m looking for and what L.A. progressives are looking for is a certain level of boldness and a willingness not to capitulate to the [Protective League] and their whims,” he said.
Times staff writers David Zahniser and James Queally contributed to this report.
Last week, Farmer posted an 11-5 (.688) record. Through the first five weeks of the season, he is 37-27 (.578).
Using point spreads with the scores Farmer predicted, his record against the spread in Week 5 would have been 9-7 (.563). For the season, his record against the spread is 25-39 (.391).
All times are Pacific and TV reflects broadcasts in the Los Angeles area. The Bengals, Dolphins, Lions and Vikings do not play this week.
The Atlanta Dream made it to the WNBA Finals, which is obviously a good thing.
In fact, it’s so good that many fans will surely want to come out and support the team when it hosts Games 3 and 4, plus Game 6 if needed, against the Golden State Valkyries.
And that could be a problem. Gateway Center Arena in College Park, Ga., where the team has played most of its home games since 2021, seats only 3,500 people for basketball games.
The Dream played six regular-season games and all three home playoff games this season at the Atlanta Hawks’ State Farm Arena, which holds around 17,000 and will be the Dream’s official home venue starting next season. But that facility is booked for all three dates the team would need it, with a Sombr concert slated for Oct. 22 and Hawks regular-season games on Oct. 24 and 29.
So, what’s a franchise playing in its first WNBA Finals since 2013 to do?
It’s not a rhetorical question. The team hasn’t announced where their home games in the series will be played, and tickets for the games in Atlanta have yet to go on sale.
Last week, Dream president Morgan Shaw Parker said they were “finalizing details” on where the team’s home games will be played during the Finals. Efforts to move the games to larger area venues, such as Gas South Arena (around 13,000 seats) and Georgia Tech’s McCamish Pavilion (8,600 seats), have hit snags, according to USA Today.
The Dream did not immediately respond Monday to questions from The Times. The WNBA referred questions back to the Dream.
The Valkyries play their home games at Chase Center in San Francisco, which seats around 18,000 people. A Doja Cat concert originally scheduled for Oct. 19 was rescheduled to Oct. 25 to avoid conflict with Game 2 of the WNBA Finals.
If the Dream can’t relocate the games, this wouldn’t be the first time WNBA Finals were held in a small venue: In 2019, the Washington Mystics hosted three games at their home venue (known now as CareFirst Arena), which seats about 4,200 people.
Led by Rhyne Howard, Allisha Gray, former UCLA star Jordin Canada and 2026 defensive player of the year Angel Reese, fourth-seeded Atlanta swept through the first two rounds of the playoffs, dismissing No. 5 Washington and No. 8 New York.
WASHINGTON — With the midterm elections just over three weeks away, the fight for control of the U.S. Senate is intensifying in battleground states, as Democrats push into red regions and Republicans pour money into key contests.
Campaigns are entering a crucial stretch for persuading the independent voters who will probably determine outcomes in swing races. Nearly all of the most competitive Senate races are in states with significant swaths of people unaffiliated with either major party — the “kingmakers” in these high-stakes midterms, said Jeremy Gruber, an independent-voting expert.
“Independent voters are going to be deciding this election in every respect,” said Gruber, senior vice president of Open Primaries, an organization that advocates for states to open primary elections to unaffiliated voters.
The urgency around courting nonaligned voters has been on display at recent debates, in ads flooding the airwaves and in the campaign money pouring into key states. For Republicans, it has become an effort to put distance between themselves and President Trump; for Democrats, it’s often a rhetorical shift toward the center and away from the far left.
In Iowa, Republican Ashley Hinson used a Wednesday night debate to emphasize her willingness to break with Trump. In Kansas, Democrat Adam Hamilton is circulating a video in which he describes himself as both liberal and conservative. In Alaska, a GOP-backed ad blitz launched last week aims to persuade voters that Democrat Mary Peltola isn’t independent-minded.
Mary Peltola, a Democrat running for the U.S. Senate seat in Alaska, addresses supporters at an election watch party on Aug. 18 in Anchorage.
(Mark Thiessen / Associated Press)
Though many unaffiliated voters have made up their minds, those who remain undecided will begin making decisions soon, as mail ballots go out and early voting begins in some states.
“For Republicans who are running behind and are looking at a potentially devastating midterm election performance, what they really need to do is target the independents who lean Republican,” said Karen Kedrowski, an Iowa State University political scientist. “For Democrats in some place like Iowa … what they need to do is make it seem safe [to independents] to vote for a Democratic candidate.”
Unaffiliated constituents have long been key to victory in swing states, particularly where races are traditionally decided by small margins. They have been viewed as particularly persuadable this year, as public dissatisfaction with Trump’s economic policies puts the votes of swing voters who backed him in 2024 up for grabs.
Forecasters predict that Democrats are on track for the House majority and could hold a majority of gubernatorial seats for the first time since 2010. Though Senate control remains a toss-up, Democrats’ chances are viewed by forecasters to have significantly improved since the summer.
A set of New York Times/Siena polls reported last week showed Democratic candidates for the Senate ahead in Texas, Michigan, Alaska and Ohio and neck-and-neck in Kansas and Iowa — all states Trump carried in 2024. Republicans, meanwhile, are feeling increasingly bullish about their chances in Maine, New Hampshire and Minnesota, all states that went blue in the last presidential election.
Republicans hold a significant fundraising advantage, however, and party donors are pouring money into key races, hoping the spending can cut into the Democrats’ edge. By September’s end, GOP advertisers had more than doubled their spending compared with August, outstripping Democrats, according to tracker AdImpact. Among the nine Senate races considered the tightest by forecasters, Republicans have outspent Democrats in all, AdImpact reported.
But on Friday, the Cook Political Report, a leading election forecaster, moved 18 House races in Democrats’ direction, saying that heavy ad spending by Republicans has not begun to move the needle in their favor.
Democrats view themselves as in their “strongest position yet” to win the majority, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), who chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said in a statement last week.
“In this final stretch of the election, Democrats will continue to vigorously campaign and fight for every vote across the expanded map,” Gillibrand said.
Republicans are confident about their ability to persuade voters in key states, said Bernadette Breslin, a spokesperson for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
“Republicans will defend the Senate majority across key battlegrounds that have trended reliably red,” Breslin said, “with candidates like Mike Rogers [in Michigan] and Roger Marshall [in Kansas] winning over independents by exposing their Democratic opponents’ radical, unaffordable agendas.”
Along with the decisions of independent and swing voters, the midterm outcomes could also hinge on the level of turnout within each party, analysts say. If a portion of the party faithful stay home in a given place — for instance, disillusioned conservatives in Kansas or frustrated Black Democrats in Michigan — that could swing individual races, analysts said.
The number of independent voters reached a record high this year, with 45% of American adults identifying as political independents in Gallup polling. Equal shares identified as Republicans and Democrats, 27% for each party. The trend is partly driven by majorities of millennial and Gen Z voters choosing to be unaffiliated with either party, according to Gallup research.
Such voters make up a majority in Alaska and between 30% and 40% of all registered voters in Maine, Iowa, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Ohio. They account for about 29% in Kansas and about 16% in Texas and Michigan, according to state data compiled by the Independent Voter Project.
Across recent polls, independent voters have favored Democrats and expressed dissatisfaction with Trump. In a late September poll from Emerson College Polling, 66% of independents said Trump has done worse than expected during his second term in office.
State Rep. James Talarico, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate, listens at a food drive at the Frederick Douglass Human Services and Justice Center on Sept. 9 in Dallas.
(Julia Demaree Nikhinson / Associated Press)
In Texas, Democrat James Talarico led Republican Ken Paxton among independents by 32 points in a September poll by Texas Public Opinion Research. The Democratic candidate in Ohio, Sherrod Brown, led Republican Sen. Jon Husted by 27 points among independents in a CNN poll released Thursday.
In Kansas, where the Senate race has become unexpectedly close amid economic-driven anger with Trump, disapproval of the president’s performance among independents appears to be rubbing off on incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall, the Republican seeking reelection.
Fifty-two percent felt unfavorably toward Marshall and 62% disapproved of Trump’s performance, according to a recent Emerson College/Nexstar poll.
In those battleground red states, that creates a tough fight for both parties, analysts said. With control of the Senate hanging in the balance, candidates are duking it out in fundraising and on the campaign trail to win every last vote.
“Both campaigns are raking in ridiculous amounts of money … and they’re spending every penny because [they] have to,” said Wichita State University political science professor Alexandra Middlewood, referring to the Kansas Senate race. “We see that they’re really going to have to fight it out all the way to the end.”
Debates are another tool for candidates to reach independent voters, said Corwin Smidt, a political science professor at Michigan State University.
Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, left, and Republican Mike Rogers meet in a Michigan Senate debate Thursday night in Grand Rapids.
(Paul Sancya / Pool Photo)
In Michigan, where the Senate candidates sparred in their first debate Thursday evening, Rep. Mike Rogers, the Republican Senate nominee, has distanced himself from Trump twice in recent weeks, first calling for an end to the war in Iran and then releasing an ad last week denouncing the tariffs against Canada. Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, meanwhile, announced a rally with former President Obama, an appeal to mainstream voters.
“They’ve got to try to both win over people who have been paying attention, but also introduce themselves to the ones who haven’t been paying attention,” Smidt said.
Winning unaffiliated voters can require a tightrope walk for candidates who are faced with the dual tasks of appealing to their party base while persuading independent constituents.
In the final stretch of the campaign, candidates seeking independent votes should telegraph a willingness to admit their party’s flaws and an understanding that voters are turned off by partisan rhetoric, said Chad Peace, legal strategist at the Independent Voter Project, which advocates for open primaries.
“They have to communicate to those folks and try to meet them where they’re at,” Peace said. “[Independents] want the campaigns of persuasion, they don’t want to hear you tell me how bad the other candidate is.”
And, Gruber said, they want to be engaged with, not ignored.
“Independent voters,” he said, “are going to be responding to those candidates and parties that actually talk to them.”
Halle Berry has several loved ones in her corner amid her contentious custody case with ex-husband Olivier Martinez, who accused the Oscar winner of physically abusing their 12-year-old son. Among the actor’s supporters is Nahla Aubry, the 18-year-old daughter Berry has kept largely out of the public eye.
Aubry, whom Berry shares with ex-boyfriend Gabriel Aubry, spoke against her former stepfather Martinez and in support of her mother in a declaration filed Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court. In his request for a restraining order filed last week, Martinez accused Berry of physically abusing their son, Maceo, “putting her hands around his neck, and choking him” during a Sept. 26 incident. Martinez was granted the restraining order and is seeking sole legal and physical custody. Nahla Aubry said in her declaration, obtained by The Times, that Martinez’s allegations left her “shocked, very sad, and very upset.”
“The statements Olivier claims my mom made are wholly inconsistent with the values she has taught me my entire life,” Aubry said. She added elsewhere in her declaration: “I have never witnessed her act violently toward anyone.”
A legal representative for Martinez did not immediately respond on Thursday to The Times’ request for comment.
In her declaration, Aubry spoke about her experiences splitting time between her mother and father’s homes amid their separation and and said her mother “consistently provided me with stability, support, guidance” and that she “never heard” the actor speak negatively about her family or her ex-boyfriend. Aubry said she lived with her brother for most of her life and has “never heard my mom say anything about Olivier” to her brother, contradicting claims Martinez raised in his request for a protective order.
Martinez pointed to an alleged 2023 incident when Berry is accused of telling their son, then 9, that his father is “ ‘a white b— trying to rob a Black woman’ due to child support issues,” according to court documents. She added that Berry has “always” encouraged her children to keep “loving relationships with our fathers.” Aubry also said in her declaration that while Berry can be strict, she is also “warm, supportive and deeply involved in our lives.”
“I have never witnessed her act violently toward anyone, however, I do remember Olivier beating up my father in our driveway when I was little,” she said, referring to a 2012 brawl between Gabriel Aubry and Martinez.
In addition to denying the claims of abuse against her mother, Aubry spoke about her stepbrother’s behavior, writing in his declaration he can be “very impulsive” and “often acts without thinking and then refuses to take responsibility for his actions.” Aubry noted she last spoke to her brother a day after the alleged September incident and that he did not seem upset, and that the current restraining order prohibits her from contacting her brother.
Berry’s fiancé, Van Hunt, and her attorneys also filed declarations in favor of the “Monster’s Ball” actor. Attorney Marina Z. Beck in her declaration accused Martinez of refusing to provide information to Berry about their son and his education, of interfering with their son’s therapy and of refusing to follow therapist recommendations. The court documents also include screenshots of text message exchanges between Berry and Martinez and an email from their son’s school about his disruptive behavior days after the alleged incident.
Berry and Martinez were married from 2013 from 2015. Their divorce finally ended in August 2023, when they agreed to joint custody of their son and Berry agreed to pay Martinez $8,000 a month in child support.
In his request for a restraining order, Martinez also asked that Berry refrain from drinking or partaking in other substances during her visitation time and asked that she complete sobriety testing “before, during and after” her visitation, according to court documents. The judge denied those sobriety testing requests until a further hearing for the order on Oct. 16.
Patrick Baghdaserians, an attorney for Martinez, told The Times last week the welfare and safety of Berry and Martinez’s child remains paramount.
This is a bad time for the Chargers to see Denver. Their offense is still struggling, Justin Herbert took a beating at Seattle, and here comes that Broncos pass rush. With the exception of last week, Denver’s offense has scored on good defenses.
David Ellison emerged with his prized Hollywood juggernaut Tuesday as the merger of Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery officially closed.
The $111-billion transaction culminated a year-long battle by the 43-year-old tech scion to add Warner Bros. Discovery to his family’s growing portfolio.
The Ellison family now controls one of the largest traditional media companies ever formed, with HBO, CNN, CBS, Comedy Central, TBS, Food Network, two traditional Hollywood studios and two major streaming services.
Shares of the new company began trading under the ticker SKYD, a switch from last week when the company went by PSKY for Paramount Skydance. Ellison has called the merged company, Skydance, the name he selected two decades ago when he began building his Hollywood studio.
